noun
1. : a usually appointed public officer who must be a person trained in medicine and whose functions are to make postmortem examinations of the bodies of persons dead by violence or suicide or under circumstances suggesting crime, to investigate the cause of their deaths, to conduct autopsies, and sometimes to initiate inquests — compare coroner
2. : a physician employed to make medical examinations (as of applicants for military service or for life insurance or of claimants of workmen's compensation)
3. : a physician appointed to examine and license candidates for the practice of medicine in a political jurisdiction (as a state)